Today I’m thrilled to begin a menu for one of the best books I’ve read in a long time: JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL by Susanna Clarke. It is a historical fantasy that follows the story of two gentlemen magicians whose partnership and eventual rivalry change their world.
Despite the book’s unbelievable length (over a thousand pages!), I found myself wanting to read as slowly as possible, just so I could stay immersed in Clarke’s world. I love how she takes magical elements and seamlessly weaves them into a realistic 19th-century English setting. The aesthetic is reminiscent of gothic fantasy, making it a perfect autumn read, yet the book is narrated like a biography or piece of academic research, which grounds it. The merger of fantasy and reality is helped by footnotes that reference dark folklore and works of magical scholarship alongside historical figures like Napoleon and Lord Byron.
In keeping with this realistic setting, I wanted today’s recipe to be an authentic historical dish. In the book, Stephen Black, a butler who is more than he appears, is offered a wigg bun with marmalade. Wigg buns are lightly sweetened rolls that were popular in the late 18th century. They were traditionally spiced with caraway. I must confess to hating caraway, so I used other period appropriate spices: allspice, nutmeg, and cloves. The recipe below is an authentic late 18th-century recipe I found on Savoring the Past, which explores historical living (it’s a great source of culinary info from that era. I’ve use their collection of online historical cookbooks for past menus). This was really fun to try, and I especially enjoyed making “barm,” the historical alternative to modern dried yeast.
As for the marmalade that accompanied Stephen’s buns, I used a slightly tweaked version of a recipe I found on Mon Petit Four, since I’d never made marmalade before. I love this recipe because it’s super easy to follow, doesn’t use a lot of ingredients, and successfully avoids the bitterness that can happen in homemade marmalade. It takes a couple hours, but a lot of that time is spent waiting for things to boil. Plus, it’s easy to scale up without much added cook time. It was super delicious, I’ll definitely make it again. Enjoy! 😀
A
Old-Fashioned Wigg Bun with Orange Marmalade
“She offered him Constantia-wine, marmalade, and an old-fashioned wigg bun–all sorts of delicacies–but he refused them all.”
— Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
INGREDIENTS:
- For the Marmalade
- 2 oranges
- 1 3/4 cups sugar
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- 2 tsp almond extract
- a pinch of salt
- For the Buns
- 1/2 cup barm
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1 cup water
- 1 cup ale (I used Goose Island winter ale, but a Yorkshire ale would be even more authentic)
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp active dry yeast
- 4 cups flour
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 tsp each allspice, ground cloves, nutmeg
- 1 egg
- The original recipe uses 6 Tbsp butter, but the wigg recipes I’ve seen that are specific to Yorkshire included eggs. So I subbed in an egg to make it more region-accurate to the story.
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 Tbsp powdered sugar
- 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch
- 1/2 cup barm
Makes 20 buns and 2 cups marmalade
INSTRUCTIONS:
- FOR THE MARMALADE. Wash and dry your oranges. With a vegetable peeler, peel the fruit, taking care to peel away as little of the pith as possible (you basically just want the skin on the outside). I prefer this peeler for this job over my regular one, since it pulls up significantly less pith. Cut the peel into 2-inch matchsticks. Set aside.
- Bring 2 cups of water to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Once boiling, add the orange peel and reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer for 10 minutes. Drain the water, keeping the peel in the pot. Add 2 more cups of water and cook on medium-high heat for 10 minutes (it’s ok that the water is cold when the timer starts). Drain the water a 2nd time. Add 2 more cups of water and cook for another 10 minutes. Drain.
- While the water boils in Step 2, cut as much of the white pith as possible from the outside of the oranges and discard. Separate the oranges into sections, discarding the pith in the center as well. Coarsely chop the sections.
- When the orange peel water has been drained for the 3rd time, add the chopped oranges, sugar, lemon juice, almond extract, and salt to the saucepan along with 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 40-60 minutes, stirring occasionally. A lot of the liquid will cook off, but the finished marmalade won’t be thick like a jam (it will thicken as it cools). The recipe I used described it as “bathing in liquid, rather than swimming in it.” A good way to test for doneness is to take a spoonful and let it slide down the side of a frozen plate. If it slides a couple inches and stops, it’s done. If it keeps sliding, cook for 10 more minutes and test again.
This is how much liquid there should be when it’s close to done. - When the marmalade is done, transfer to a sealable glass jar. Allow to come to room temperature. Seal and refrigerate until ready to use.
- FOR THE BUNS. Preheat oven to 400°. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside. To make your barm (another name for liquid yeast), add 1/2 cup flour to a medium-sized bowl. Add in your water and ale, whisking until the flour is fulling combined. Whisk in sugar and yeast. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rest for 15 minutes. While you wait, whisk together the flour, sugar, and spices for your dough in a large bowl. Set aside.
- When the barm is ready, whisk the egg into the milk. Add the egg mix to the bowl of the spiced flour mix, along with 1/2-3/4 cups barm. Work with your fingers until it makes a soft, shaggy dough (start with a 1/2 cup of barm, and if you can’t get the dough to adhere to itself when you press it together, mix in 1/4 cup more). Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and shape it into a 8″x10″ rectangle about 1/2 inch thick. Cut into 20 2-inch squares. Gently roll into balls. Place the balls evenly apart on the prepared baking sheets and use a butter knife to cut a large, deep “X” into each ball without cutting all the way through the bottom. This will shape it into wedges. Cover with a kitchen cloth and allow to rest for 30 minutes. Bake for 15-18 minutes, flipping and rotating the pans halfway through. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
- Whisk together powdered sugar and cornstarch. Sift over the buns (the cornstarch is a modern day hack to keep the sugar from soaking into the buns).
- Serve after discovering there is a new magician in Yorkshire.
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